WASHINGTON — Almost until the early afternoon vote Monday on the financial rescue plan, voters bombarded congressional offices, protesting almost in unison: Don't bail out renegade financial executives and companies.

On Monday, House members, who face the voters in five weeks, listened to their constituents rather than their party leaders and rejected the $700 billion financial rescue package. For many, it was just too much to swallow too quickly, and too hard to explain.

Most House members said, "I want this thing to pass, but I want you to vote for it, not me," explained Rep. Paul Ryan , R- Wis. , who voted for the bill.

The 228 votes against the plan included 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans, a mix of conservatives, liberals and members in tough re-election fights.

Conservatives saw too much government interference in free markets and too high a price tag; liberals thought it provided too much help for Wall Street and not enough for distressed homeowners.

"There's a real sense of frustration. People see their tax dollars spent bailing out financial institutions, and they themselves are not doing well," said Rep. Elijah Cummings , D- Md. , who represents a predominantly black Baltimore district. He voted no.

From the opposite end of the political spectrum came conservatives such as Rep. Jeb Hensarling , R- Texas .

"This Congress , in a rushed effort to provide stability to a troubled credit market, did not adequately discuss or investigate potential alternatives that would have constituted a workout and not a bailout," he said.

Hensarling, Cummings and lots of others had pleaded with their leaders to give them a bill they could explain easily back home. Constituents wanted Congress to act, they said, but were suspicious of what they might do.

Instead, many members found the compromise that emerged to be too complex, fueling constituents' qualms.

Most lawmakers knew that what had happened was something much more fundamental: Members voted to please the folks back home, not their leaders in Washington or the titans of Wall Street .

"This is the same politics of fear we are hearing from the fat cat financial bullies from Wall Street ," said Rep. Ted Poe , R- Texas , who voted no.

Rep. Jeff Flake , R- Ariz. , recalled how many people voted for hard-to-understand measures such as the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill or 2002 legislation giving President Bush broad authority to wage war in Iraq , only to learn later that they'd signed blank checks to Bush that would come to haunt them.

"There were a lot of eyes rolling on this bailout. We're heard this kind of thing before," said Flake, who voted no.

After the bill failed Monday, each side accused the other of scuttling the measure for political gain.

"We see a lot of people on the Republican side trying to bail themselves out after eight years of voting in lockstep with the president," said House Democratic Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland .

Nonsense, countered GOP members.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House," said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio , blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D- Calif , for inflaming GOP sensibilities.

Pelosi blasted Bush's economic policies and lashed out at "a right wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation."

Rep. Barney Frank , D- Mass. , the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee who led efforts to craft the compromise plan, said of GOP remarks such as Boehner's: "I am appalled." We're facing a national crisis, he said, and Republicans are saying their members voted against the proposed remedy "because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country."

Neither the House nor the Senate will vote Tuesday because of the Jewish New Year , but the Senate could debate the measure. No one, though, could say what might emerge as consensus legislation, or when.

Chairman Frank couldn't say if leaders will try to tweak the bill that failed or come up with a new, easier-to-explain plan.

"That's a question we have to address," said Frank."

"I don't know that we know the path forward at this point," said House Republican leader Boehner.

The Senate , where only 34 of 100 seats are up on Nov. 4 , is expected to pass the legislation easily. After the chaos Monday in the House, the Senate's mood was calm, and people remained upbeat about eventual passage.

"A lot of people have misgivings," said Sen. Tom Coburn , R- Okla. , one of the Senate's leading conservative voices. "I have a lot of misgivings, but I'm still going to vote for it."

WASHINGTON - The House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive into recession without it. Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was announced on the House floor.

Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite howls of protest from their constituents back home. Despite pressure from supporters, not enough members were willing to take the political risk just five weeks before an election.

Ample no votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle. More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats opposed the bill.

The overriding question for congressional leaders was what to do next. Congress has been trying to adjourn so that its members can go out and campaign. And with only five weeks left until Election Day, there was no clear indication of whether the leadership would keep them in Washington. Leaders were huddling after the vote to figure out their next steps.

A White House spokesman said that President Bush was "very disappointed."

"There's no question that the country is facing a difficult crisis that needs to be addressed," Tony Fratto told reporters. He said the president will be meeting with members of his team later in the day "to determine next steps."

"Obviously we are very disappointed in this outcome," Fratto said. "There's no question that the country is facing a difficult crisis that needs to be addressed. The president will be meeting with his team this afternoon to determine the next steps and will also be in touch with congressional leaders."

Monday's mind-numbing vote had been preceded by unusually aggressive White House lobbying, and Fratto said that Bush had used a "call list" of people he wanted to persuade to vote yes as late as a short time before the vote.

Lawmakers shouted news of the plummeting Dow Jones average as lawmakers crowded on the House floor during the drawn-out and tense call of the roll, which dragged on for roughly 40 minutes as leaders on both sides scrambled to corral enough of their rank-and-file members to support the deeply unpopular measure.

They found only two.

Bush and his economic advisers, as well as congressional leaders in both parties had argued the plan was vital to insulating ordinary Americans from the effects of Wall Street's bad bets. The version that was up for vote Monday was the product of marathon closed-door negotiations on Capitol Hill over the weekend.

"We're all worried about losing our jobs," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared in an impassioned speech in support of the bill before the vote. "Most of us say, 'I want this thing to pass, but I want you to vote for it — not me.' "

With their dire warnings of impending economic doom and their sweeping request for unprecedented sums of money and authority to bail out cash-starved financial firms, Bush and his economic chiefs have focused the attention of world markets on Congress, Ryan added.

"We're in this moment, and if we fail to do the right thing, Heaven help us," he said.

The legislation the administration promoted would have allowed the government to buy bad mortgages and other rotten assets held by troubled banks and financial institutions. Getting those debts off their books should bolster those companies' balance sheets, making them more inclined to lend and easing one of the biggest choke points in the credit crisis. If the plan worked, the thinking went, it would help lift a major weight off the national economy that is already sputtering.

The fear in the financial markets send the Dow Jones industrials cascading down by over 700 points at one juncture. As the vote was shown on TV, stocks plunged and investors fled to the safety of the credit markets, worrying that the financial system would keep sinking under the weight of failed mortgage debt.

"As I said on the floor, this is a bipartisan responsibility and we think (Democrats) met our responsibility," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Asked whether majority Democrats would try to reverse the stunning defeat, Hoyer said, "We're certainly not going to abandon our responsibility. We'll continue to focus on this and see what actions we can take."

Several Republican aides said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had torpedoed any spirit of bipartisanship that surrounded the bill with her scathing speech near the close of the debate that blamed Bush's policies for the economic turmoil.

Without mentioning her by name, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., No. 3 Republican, said: "The partisan tone at the end of the debate today I think did impact the votes on our side."

Putnam said lawmakers were working "to garner the necessary votes to avoid a financial collapse."

But the defeat was already causing a brutal round of finger-pointing.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House," House Minority Leader John Boehner said. Pelosi's words, the Ohio Republican said, "poisoned our conference, caused a number of members that we thought we could get, to go south."

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the whip, estimated that Pelosi's speech changed the minds of a dozen Republicans who might otherwise have supported the plan.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., scoffed at the explanation.

"Well if that stopped people from voting, then shame on them," he said. "If people's feelings were hurt because of a speech and that led them to vote differently than what they thought the national interest (requires), then they really don't belong here. They're not tough enough."

More than a repudiation of Democrats, Frank said, Republicans' refusal to vote for the bailout was a rejection of their own president.

"The Republicans don't trust the administration," he said. "It's a Republican revolt against George Bush and John McCain."

In her speech, Pelosi had assailed Bush and his administration for reckless economic policies.

"They claim to be free market advocates when it's really an anything-goes mentality: No regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail, you will have a golden parachute and the taxpayer will bail you out. Those days are over. The party is over," Pelosi said.

"Democrats believe in a free market," she said. "But in this case, in its unbridled form, as encouraged, supported, by the Republicans — some in the Republican Party, not all — it has created not jobs, not capital. It has created chaos."